Women on the average weekly wage, which is lower than for men by about $500, would struggle to live anywhere near the centres of Sydney and Melbourne without sharing accommodation, analysis by the Council to Homeless Persons shows.
Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

Melbourne is becoming increasingly unaffordable for single women, with one bedroom apartments in 75% of suburbs beyond the reach of the average income earner, according to a recent analysis.

With the exception of Footscray, all are more than 10km from the city centre.

The average weekly wage of Victorian men, on the same measure, was $1,306, allowing for weekly rental payments below rental stress levels of $390.

A similar analysis by Guardian Australia of rental affordability in Sydney found that a single woman earning $973, the average wage for women in New South Wales, could not even afford the average rent on a one bedroom property in an outer area like the Blue Mountains, Penrith, Campbelltown or Gosford, according to Housing NSW figures.

They would however be able to afford the average rent of the greater metropolitan area, which extends from Cessnock to Wollongong.

Men, on an average weekly wage in NSW of $1,420, would be able to afford middle-ring suburbs like Bankstown, Parramatta, and Manly.

Jenny Smith, the chief executive of Council to Homeless Persons and chair of national peak body Homelessness Australia, said the situation for many single women was untenable and left them vulnerable to homelessness in the event of a crisis, like losing their job or a high medical bill.

“When you look at your average single woman on an average wage, you can see it’s very, very difficult to rent anywhere reasonable,” Smith told Guardian Australia.

“If you do, you are essentially putting yourself into a poverty situation.”

Housing poverty occurs when people who fall in the bottom 40% of wage earners put more than 30% of their weekly take-home pay into housing, which reduces their capacity to save money and thus their financial resilience.

Smith said that while many single people on lower incomes lived in share houses in order to be able to afford more convenient suburbs, “not everyone’s personality is suited to sharing”.

It became even less feasible if women were trying to support children on the same wage, she said.

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Smith said the disparity between average weekly earnings and average weekly housing costs had increased markedly in the past 15 years, due to the “inexorable trend of housing prices,” and said reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax were desperately needed to curb housing costs.

She also urged state and federal governments to invest in more social housing for those who could no longer afford to be in the private market.

“The differences between the haves and the have-nots in this country is just growing exponentially, and absolutely nothing is happening in the environment at all to stop this trend,” she said.